The field of the invention is the electrical connection of dry cell batteries and the invention relates more particularly to devices which assist in the preparation of battery packs composed of multiple cells in differing configurations which will hold a number of batteries together electrically connected normally in series but possibly in parallel or partially in parallel and partially in series to provide a source of electricity for a battery powered device.
Several battery jigs have recently been developed to assist in the soldering of a group of batteries in a line. One such device is shown in Xtreme R/C Cars, Issue 3.9 June-July, 1998, at Page 68-69. In this device the batteries are arranged by standing them up in a tray alternating polarity on the top positive/negative. Two side braces must be carefully held to sandwich the cells with nothing to locat them or keep them square, after which a Velcro strap is wrapped around the two side braces to hold the cells together. Care must be taken to keep the cells from falling out until they are placed in the bottom tray. The photograph in the center bottom of Page 68 shows a user soldering one end of a battery bar to a battery. After battery bars are placed on one surface, then the half connected cells are flipped over and the other set of battery bars are soldered to complete the series connection. As stated in the article, the job of holding the two pressure plates while placing the strap around the plates ". . . takes some dexterity, to say the least." (Column 1, page 69).
A second battery jig is shown in Xtreme R/C Cars, Issue 2.9 May-June, 1997, at Pages 42-43. In this device the batteries are placed in a battery jig. The battery bar is held between two adjacent batteries by another object, such as a pair of needle nose plyers, which is best performed by a second person. Then, as stated in step 6 on Page 42, one "gently slides the pack out of the jig, then the pack is turned over and the user slides it back into the jig and repeats the soldering step. Also note in Step 2, the battery bars themselves are also pre-tinned. There are several shortcomings with this approach: One is that the batteries are not held tightly together before they are soldered together. Also, only half of the batteries have been interconnected in Step 5. In other words, three bars have been soldered on as shown in the bottom of the batteries in Step 8 and, thus, there are three separate units which must be gently slid in and out of the jig.
Any commercially provided battery packs have been mass produced by welding thin conductors between adjacent batteries and then holding the groups of batteries together in heat-shrink tubing. While this method permits mass production, it has some serious limitations in electrical resistance due to the nature of the thin conductors soldered between adjacent batteries.